[Hey, Frontier!] What I want from the Galaxy Map

[malenfant]

I suppose I could post this to Suggestions but it'd probably get lost in there. But on coming back to ED one of the things that still really irritates me from an exploration point of view is the Galaxy Map. Basically, it's next to useless.

We have a load of information available to us in the map, and we have no way to access it effectively. We have the Location of systems (Sector names and system IDs) and the Number and type of stars in the system. But we have no way to search for anything with those. Time and again I have found that I want to:

- plot a route to the nearest G-mass or H-mass system? Can't do it. (the best I can do is search for "Sectorname XX-X G" and then click the arrow to start searching from G0 to whatever it goes up to, and then figure out the nearest one, which is a huge pain to do).
- plot routes using only systems containing more than one star? Can't do it.
- plot routes using only solo star systems? Can't do it.
- plot routes that include specific systems (e.g. just E-mass systems, or just multiple systems including white dwarfs)? Can't do it.
- plot routes that include specific star types preferentially (e.g. if I want to plot a 20k route but I want it to include white dwarfs wherever possible)? Can't do it.


So why is the search still so useless, four years after release? I don't think any of these are computationally difficult or impossible to do (if they can plot routes that go up to 20k ly now, they can do this). If the info is available in the system map then it should be available to plot our routes (and it is there, it's not like it's top secret and I don't believe for a second that it would ruin the game by making it "too easy to find things"). Are Frontier ever planning to improve this? It's not enough to just search by star class or whatever - we should be able to use the information that is already present in the map too!

Sorry, I just find it really frustrating. I don't want to be plotting routes to places and just hoping I randomly find something interesting on the way. I want to be able to specifically LOOK for and TARGET interesting things.

 

[Sapyx]

One of the things I'd like to do with the map, but currently can't, is to filter for giant stars. Since they're the same class as regular non-giant stars, sorting by star class doesn't work. The only way to find them is to switch the map to Realistic mode and scroll around until you happen to spot one.

 

[marx]

Some interesting points there. There are two places where it wouldn't work though.

Regarding mass codes: given that we got those by basically reverse-engineering how galaxy generation works, I don't think Frontier would like to include in-game functionality that's so meta. It's not like it's a real astronomical phenomenon.

As for system contents, the main star of a system appears to be more important and stored separately than the other stars are. To me, it appeared that the game has to request the seed (or part of the seed at least) to get those. Which is fine for when a player clicks on a system, but not workable when the game has to search through lots of them, and even less so when it has to plot routes based on this.
My suspicion on this was when I lost my internet connection while I was looking at the galaxy map, and before the game booted me because of the connection to the transaction server timing out, I could still look at the stars and their names on the galaxy map, but couldn't get any info on them if I clicked on one. So main star type was at least available, the rest weren't.

 

[malenfant]

Yeah, Giant stars are only possible to find using the realistic map (look for big blobby red/orange stars). That would be nice to filter out in the galaxy map search too.

I don't see the mass codes as something game-specific rather than setting specific. And it shouldn't matter either - it's something that is on the map, and it's something that has meaning, so it's something that should be searchable.

Don't know about the system contents listing - if it is something that only appears when the star is selected (once it actually decides to make it selectable, at least. Usually it's busy plotting routes for a few seconds before letting me do that) then that could be an issue.